ANGELES CITY- Huge industrial fishing fleets, including tuna factory ships, owned by Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean tuna fishers regularly intrude into the waters of Aurora province and “even enter the 15-kilometer municipal fishing waters.”
The fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) reported this yesterday after Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on the right to food warned governments that small fishermen, local fishing communities and sustainable fishing are threatened by ocean grabbing or long-distance, industrial-scale trawling in various parts of the world.
“These fishing flees owned by Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean tuna operators are periodically seen from January to July every year,” Pamalakaya said.
Among them are eight large Japanese vessels, it added.
“If there are eight Japanese tuna fishing vessels that regularly poach in the waters of Aurora province daily from January to July that means a total haul of 27,000 tons of tuna per factory ship during the period or 216,000 metric tons of tuna for all eight fishing vessels,” Pamalakaya noted.
The group also said that “eight fishing vessels could earn as much as US$1.274 billion or US$ 160 million per fishing vessel in just six months from tuna poaching in Aurora and other tuna-rich waters of the Philippine territory.”
In a meeting of the Central Luzon Peace and Order Council presided by Interior and Local Governments Sec. Mar Roxas, Aurora Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo confirmed that foreign vessels do fish in national waters off her province, as she requested the government to provide faster and more efficient boats for coastal law enforcers in her province.
She reported that in some instances, small boats were able to shoo off big foreign fishing vessels without any untoward incident.
Pamalakaya said that small Filipino fishermen in Aurora have reported foreign vessels using “long-line fishing gears for hauling of tuna, blue marlin and other high value fish species.”
“Foreign fishing vessels even entered in the 15-kilometer municipal fishing waters from the shoreline,” the group also reported.
Pamalakaya national chairperson Fernando Hicap denounced such incidents as “ocean grabbing.”
“Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese fishing vessels in Baler Bay in Aurora province are seen between January to July every year fishing for tuna. This has been confirmed not only by small fishers but also by the Philippine Coast Guard,” Hicap said.
He recalled that in 2008, Sen. Edgardo Angara, who hails from Aurora, “revealed that there were eight foreign fishing vessels ,some with canneries were seen almost daily during the months from January to July and even asked the Philippine Coast Guard to establish a station in Northern Aurora and assign patrol boats to protect the province’s waters from foreign poachers.”
Pamalakaya noted that “a 3,000-ton tuna factory ship, accompanied by support fishing fleets, can catch as much as 150 metric tons of tuna on a 24-hour operation basis. By industry standard, a single factory ship could harvest 50,000 metric tons of tuna per year.”
The group also noted that Japan is known to consume 630,000 tons of tuna per year or 11 pounds of tuna per person.
“With the current shrinking catch in Japan seas and in the Philippines as one of the major sources of tuna in Southeast Asia, particularly the country’s fishing areas with confirmed rich tuna deposits like the Moro Gulf and Celebes Sea in Mindanao, the Northern Aurora waters and other tuna potential areas across the Philippine archipelago,” Pamalakaya also said.
It added that “with the increase in the supply of tuna produced by Japanese factory ships and their shipment to Japan and other countries, the local tuna producers and small tuna fishermen would be at their mercy by way of depressed prices, or worse when tuna stocks in Philippine waters are depleted it could lead to supply constraints and closure of local tuna producers and the livelihood of 180,000 tuna fishermen and fish workers.”
Pamalakaya said “the situation is very, very alarming.”
